On primary cancer of the brain : an inquiry into its pathology, with statistics as to its frequency, and illustrative cases / by G. Mackenzie Bacon.

  • Bacon, G. Mackenzie.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On primary cancer of the brain : an inquiry into its pathology, with statistics as to its frequency, and illustrative cases / by G. Mackenzie Bacon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    These circumstances—viz., the readiness of diagnosis and necessity for local treatment, sufficiently account for the greater attention, the more superficial developments of the disease have received at the hands of practitioners, and may further explain how fallacious the ordinary mortuary regis- ters are as guides to the real number of deaths from cancer in particular organs. For a death from malignant disease of the breast or external parts is hardly likely to be assigned to any other than the proper cause, while an equal or greater amount of similar disease in other parts, less accessible to observation, may have hundreds of victims, whose maladies bear any name but the right one. Thus, the presence of a tumour, or some ulceration of the skin causing an obvious disfigurement, would be sure to attract notice, while a scirrhous nodule, equally fatal in nature, involving the in- testine, brain, or liver, might kill without producing symp- toms to manifest the true nature of the disease. In the one case the disease declares itself, in the other it is latent, unsuspected, or misinterpreted. But whatever difficulties stand in the way of diagnosis in ordinary cases of disease, are increased manifold in deal- ing with brain affections, the symptoms of which are gene- rally obscure and uncertain. The symptoms produced by tumour are not often very definite, but supposing the exis- tence or site of a growth determined, it must rarely happen that its nature can be guessed during the life of the patient. The discovery after death of a tumour in the brain has but too often satisfied observers without any further in- quiry into its nature or structure, but the more exact pathology of later years has invoked a careful investigation of all such growths, and opened a new field for study. Without any definite knowledge on the subject of brain cancer, the vaguest notions have gained acceptance, notions which a more exact inquiry has proved to have no founda-
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